Turner had front-row seat to civil rights history

Walter Turner, former law clerk for Judge Frank M. Johnson, holds a framed copy of Time with Johnson on the cover, as he talks about his experiences during the civil rights movement.(Photo: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser)Buy Photo

Judge Frank M. Johnson slammed his fist on Walter Turner’s desk, and in its tiny way his fist may have impacted civil rights history and the Selma-to-Montgomery march.

Turner, who last week celebrated 50 years as an attorney, was the clerk for the famous federal judge, who made some of the nation’s most important rulings on civil rights.

But even before he became Johnson’s clerk in Montgomery, Turner had seen civil rights history being made — and was unimpressed.

He was at law school at the University of Alabama in 1963, working upstairs on the university law review in a building that gave him and the students with him a perfect view of Gov. George C. Wallace’s infamous stand “in the schoolhouse door” to keep black students from integrating the university.

What Turner said he saw was a farce.

“I thought on that day he was an actor, certainly not playing his real role as governor,” Turner said. “From what I saw, it was a scripted act, a farce. He was playing to the public, not following the law, which was clear. The courts, the president had made that clear.

“He was simply being defiant for the cameras, the electorate.”

While clerking for Johnson in 1964 and 1965, Turner saw the other side of the civil rights movement.

In March 1965, while attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery, marchers were gassed and beaten by state troopers in what would be called Bloody Sunday. Attorney Fred Gray filed a lawsuit for activist Hosea Williams, seeking protection from further violence at the next Selma-to-Montgomery march. Johnson was the judge who heard Williams vs. Wallace, and the four days it took to decide are days Turner will never forget.

Not that having private conversations with the Rev. Martin Luther King, living under federal protection because of death threats and maybe not just witnessing the Selma-to-Montgomery march but perhaps influencing its success, would be easy to forget.

What Turner remembers most is King himself.

“I shall never, ever, ever forget him,” said Turner, who wound up having “two or three” personal conversations with the civil rights leader.

“Dr. King was the most impressive, effective person I have ever met in my 75 years,” Turner said. “His charisma is almost impossible to describe. His voice, his personality and his charisma simply drew you in, whether you liked him or not.

“He was one of the greatest Americans to ever risk his life for this country. He simply moved his vision forward regardless of the obstacles.”

During one of the conversations, King told the young law clerk he needed to realize something about his boss, Judge Johnson.

“I just want you to know that he is the one judge in this United States that gives true meaning to the word justice,” King told him.

King wasn’t the only person who made an impression on the young man. There was Gray, and there were also John Lewis and Amelia Boynton, who both gave “incredibly moving and effective” testimony about being beaten during Bloody Sunday.

And, indirectly, there was the Klan.

Turner had received death threats from the KKK and other groups, something that at the time just seemed part of working with Johnson.

“They threatened to kill us and all of our kind,” he said. “Frankly, it just washed off of me. I may have just been too stupid to take it seriously.

“Johnson, he was used to the threats. He’d been getting them for years — letters, telephone calls, everything. It didn’t matter. He never blinked.”

One reason Turner said he didn’t worry was he trusted the people protecting them.

“I was covered pretty well by the federal marshals. ... They protected the courtroom, our offices and us at home.”

It was the next-to-last day that Johnson slammed his fist down on Turner’s desk — a very unusual action for the judge.

Turner said Johnson “was a loving, caring gentleman,” and the only other time he had done that was when Turner asked if he could be present for a conference in chambers. Johnson told him never to ask something like that again, because Turner was his clerk, his representative, and thus was always welcome in chambers.

So this time when the judge’s fist came down on the desk, it got Turner’s attention.

Turner said he was just sitting at his desk when Johnson slammed his fist on to it, looked him in the eye and said, “There is no way I can approve this march unless I have been given a very specific and complete plan detailing every stop along the route and every detail to keep the marchers protected from violence.”

Then Johnson walked away, leaving Turner “wondering what in the world I was supposed to do with that.”

He made a decision and called a friend in the Justice Department. “I told him it was just my opinion, but perhaps some plan in detail, great detail, would be in order, and the next day a very detailed plan was turned in to the court.”

To this day, Turner doesn’t know if Johnson was just letting off pressure or had hoped the information would get out, or whether passing on his opinion had anything to do with the detailed plan being submitted the next day. What he does know is that after receiving the detailed plan, Johnson allowed the march to take place.

That Sunday, Johnson and Turner watched from a window in the federal courthouse as the marchers made their way to the state Capitol.